


Horizon

by lasergirl



Category: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/77238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Horizon

_**Sky Captain: Horizon 1/1**_  
**Title:** Horizon  
**Fandom:** _Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow_  
**Pairing:** Joe/Dex  
**Rating:** PG  
**Notes:**Follows the same events as [Fond Ships](http://www.livejournal.com/users/coelogyne/17519.html). Joe realizes he's been overlooking something for far too long.

  


Funny, the face Dex made when he was concentrating; the tip of his tongue protruding that precise half-inch at the very corner of his mouth, wrinkles carrying across the corners of his eyes and prematurely scoring his forehead. It almost made Joe feel like he could be worth something, to see that gleam of concentration light in his eyes, to know that he'd maybe, possibly, just put it there.

More often than not, it was a lie. Sure, maybe Dex would get that look on a really, really good day, but he got it on really, really bad days too. Dented aerilons, damaged wingtips, fused wiring could all do it to him, indigestion maybe. That half-inch of tongue was Joe's fuel gauge, altimeter, speedometer. It told him where he stood and how much further he could fly.

Abruptly, then, the tongue slipped back inside Dex's lips and he flipped the welding goggles back onto his forehead. He looked good, a blush of torch-burn highlighting his cheekbones. For a second, the dark flashing eyes lit on Joe's face - gravity wavered - and then the too-pink gum snapped between his lips. Joe flinched.

"Will she live?"

Dex cocked his head owlishly, then slapped his flat palm on the rotor housing and flicked the oxyacetylene hose away from his ankles. A grin.

"Captain, she could fly you to the moon and back if you asked her to." He spat into his handkerchief and gently caressed away the cinder flecks marring the steel skin of the plane. "I'd take it easy the first night, though, she's got a whole new gear assembly - different ratio - she might not dance the way you remember."

Joe ran his hand along the flank of his plane, feeling the morse code of rivets jump beneath his fingertips. The corner of his mouth jerked into a smirk - even nearly a smile.

"The way I remember she'd foxtrot along the horizon and turn on a dime."

"Well let's just say," said Dex, beaming, "now you'll need change."

Joe bounced the toe of his boot off the starboard tyre and whistled in appreciation. "And here I thought she couldn't get much better without a full refit."

"In estimation, a refit could take months - which we don't have - and machining new parts, and the new alloys - it could be a year before you'd fly again." Dex flashed an apologetic smile and soldiered on with his checklist. "With the assembly changes, you'll get your extra horses as well as the full amphibious spectrum. I added a gear for transitional zones - it's not just dart or dive anymore, you'll actually get up to eight knots surface cruising."

"My, you have been burning the midnight oil." Joe clambered up the camber of a wing and squatted by the cockpit. Flashy new dials and lights gleamed amongst the old; little labours of love scattered discretely across the dashboard. "What's this one?" His finger traced the chrome rim of the biggest, a circle imposed upon a line.

Dex scrambled up the opposite wing and leaned in. It was awkward, two men hanging half-out of a plane, and Joe pulled back.

"Oh that, it's a horizon line. On a gimbal, when you bank and climb, it stays level. At least, I think it should. I calibrated it for our altitude and I don't think it'll change much when you travel." He flicked one finger at the tiny silver knob below the dial, an infinitely small adjustment. "Tare it though, when you're in aquatic mode. It tends to get confused if you dive straight down. Still working on that."

"You're - that's - amazing!" Joe had a sudden thought that Dex could do these things simply because no one had told him it was impossible. "All this in twenty-four hours?"

Dex shrugged like he was ducking a blow to the head, snapped his gum and slid off the wing. On impact, his boots echoed across the cavernous hangar like a gunshot. "Ah," he said quietly, "you know I can't sleep sometimes, Captain."

Joe caught a hint of something there, behind that self-effacing little tic and it gave him pause. An awkward little moment danced between them.

"Tomorrow," said Joe decisively, "I'll take her for a spin. I've, uh, promised Polly I'd take her dancing at the 'Flamingo' and she'll murder me if I'm late." He could almost see the defeat crushing Dex down. Christ. "It's a miracle. Good boy, Dex."

"It's nothing," and his knuckles whitened along the knife-edge of the plane's aerilons. "It's no problem at all." Not a hint of that pink tongue of concentration; Joe had lost the prize. A really, really bad day.

**

The late-night scene; Joe in rakish civvies, trying to play the good boy for a change, and Polly in another strange number from the back of her closet - a hat that defied the laws of physics and probably fashion as well. Before Joe took her back to her apartment, they agreed on a quick stopover, and the diner's sign advertised 'Nite Owl' in lights. Joe was staring at the cartoon owl on the window while they ate.

"Don't you ever find him a little, well, unnerving?" Polly was sipping at her malted and leaving lipstick on the straw, Joe was watching her and pawing at a corned beef sandwich. "I mean, he barely sleeps, and some of the things he comes up with are terrifying! And you leave him alone in that hangar, it gives me the creeps!"

It took Joe about ten seconds to realize they were supposed to be talking about Dex and not the owl, and he nodded and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. He could never say it was a bore being around her; Polly seemed to attract the strangest attention sometimes. Yet here he was, stargazing over her shoulder while the malt-glass sweated onto the table.

"Ah, he's harmless when he's working," Joe shrugged, "you know him. Once a problem's got his attention he won't let go of it, not until it's finished, sold or junked. Even junked, we have to run everything through the furnace to keep it away from him or he'd keep it under his bed. That's hardly something that goes over well with National Security, a rogue genius keeping science projects with the dust bunnies."

Still, Polly's face was unamused, her mouth compressed into a thin line that sent lipstick crowfeathers creeping into the corners. "It isn't natural," she said, "A grown man reading those dreadful Victory Hero things, dismantling those killer robots? He has a gun that can melt through steel! What's stopping him from selling things to the highest bidder? What could stop him from trying to take over the world?"

Of course Polly didn't understand the grin as Joe's way of an answer. He meant 'me, he does it all for me, because I ask him to,' but halfway through the smile it came to him like a punch in the gut. Sometimes he didn't even ask.

"Oh, Christ, Polly," he shoved the chair back with a scrape and tossed a crinkled bill on the table between them, "Pay this and get yourself a cab home. I've got business to take care of. We should do this again sometime." He couldn't help but see her eyes as he dashed out - a look of bitter defeat that even her false smile couldn't hide.

**

Joe had a compartment in the Flying Tiger barracks, the same as the rest of the pilots and mechanics, but Dex didn't. Through choice, or some perverse kind of fortune, he'd - well, 'fortified' was the word - built himself a niche at the Eastern wall of the main hangar, a sort of bunker half-camouflaged by plane hulks and unearthly robot carcasses. It was half-prison, half retreat, though on any given day Joe could hardly tell the difference.

So no one saw Joe coming home at 0400 with lipstick on his collar: no one but Dex. That was where Joe headed first, and damn the consequences, he had something to say. His echoing footsteps gave him away before he got fifty yards across the hangar, so when he got to the bunker, Dex was already at the door.

He'd been asleep - or trying to, if the striped flannels were anything to go by. There was a whittled-down pencil in his hand and anguished wrinkles across his forehead.

"Captain?" He shuffled aside to admit Joe, wild-haired and manic. "There something going on?"

Joe took in the state of the bunker, the tilted draft board with folios everywhere, blueprints tacked to any available wall surface. Comic books were scattered underfoot like leaves, across the Spartan single bed. Dex was in pyjamas and the bed hadn't even been turned down.

"You." Joe pointed across the darkened hangar at his plane with a forceful finger. "Made me that. Why?"

Dex wiggled his shoulders and said "I thought it would work."

"And? Did it?" Joe's knees were trembling. Adrenaline had gotten him this far and now it was just plain, bald nerves; his ulcer reminded him in no uncertain terms.

"Does it? I think 'does' is right. You didn't fly it, did you? Not at night!" Dex rolled the pencil back onto the drafting table.

"You made Franky the Manta squadron, Dex, and she slept with you. Is that considered a victory?"

Dex's mouth dropped open in a little silent 'o' as his brain scrambled to keep up. "Captain, are you drunk? What's the matter with you?"

"It didn't work, did it, Dex - my plane didn't work because I was too busy looking at something else, not the horizon!" Joe grabbed Dex's shoulder and shook him. "Say it!"

"Captain, I really don't think you're stable." Dex stammered, cringing back from Joe's hand.

Shake. "Say it!"

Just a few feet from the bunker wall, Joe pinned him. Dex turned with a malicious smirk on his face, "You want to hear it, Captain? Okay. I was jealous. You were too busy looking at Polly Perkins' topography to ever look at me!"

Joe grinned a wildcat smile and kissed him. Christ. Surprise! Dex kissed him back. Dex bit his tongue; Dex drew blood, even.

"You knew that, Dex," Joe wiped the pearl of blood from his bottom lip and it smeared across his jawline. "Kept my eyes on what mattered."

"Why'd you never tell me?" Dex sulked, "Kept calling me 'boy' and making me little, Joe, I'm not a kid anymore! There isn't a man here who can match what I do for you. I… oh." Truth sank in, little by little, until there was nothing behind the indignation. There; it was said.

And that was one thing Joe couldn't answer, but he reached out and pulled flannel Dex towards him, into the circle of his arms. Let them just rest together, breathe together. A moment went by, and Dex tilted his face down into the hollow of Joe's neck. His voice went muffled.

"You know she was my first, uh, girl. Franky." This in the same tone of voice as a comment on the weather, coming from Dex. "She taught me a lot of things, but what I learned most of all was who I wanted to be with. She would have given me millions to fly with Albion and the Squadron but all I ever wanted was to be here."

The 'with you' floated unsaid but Joe heard it anyway. He swallowed past the thickness grown in his throat.

"She knew, Joe, she knew then and she knows now, and I know, and every day that goes by I think how futile the whole thing is when you're with Polly - I can't even dance, you know."

Joe swayed gently with Dex in his arms, just holding him there and letting the thoughts boil over in his head until he could talk.

"When Totenkopf had you abducted, there wasn't a second I didn't regret. If you'd been killed I don't know what I would have done." It hadn't been apparent until Joe had seen his own desperation reflected in Franky Cook's black, black eye. "You're more than just the horizon, Dex, you're the whole goddamn world for me."

Dex made a noise halfway between a yawn and a kitten's mew. "Joe. It's four o'clock in the morning. Are you gonna tuck me into bed or undress me?"

Grin.

They were both a little rusty, and the logistics were different with boys instead of girls, but Joe fit mathematically, improbably, beside Dex in that narrow bed. The second kiss was sweeter than the first, if it was possible to measure. It took longer, too, for Joe to remove the magically-appearing wad of gum from under his own tongue. He raised an eyebrow at Dex.

Dex looked innocent, nuzzled at his throat and said, "I bite my lip when I'm thinking."

Joe bit Dex's lip, lightly, and between the third and fourth installations of kissing he lost track, could barely remember what parts of him were his and what parts were Dex. Maybe he could get a schematic drawn up in the morning, a detailed diagram of it all - gauge it, measure it, mark it on a dial - but tonight Joe was just rolling, rolling, watching the horizon dip beneath him and was just thankful he still remembered how to fly.

END.  


Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


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